New set photos from Amy Winehouse biopic have people calling for it to be boycotted

The new biopic about Amy Winehouse is attracting quite a bit of criticism before it has even had so much as a trailer, with fans claiming that they’ll be boycotting it when it eventually hits cinemas.

A lot of the issues seem to stem from the seemingly fictionalised version of an arrest of the late singer's husband Blake Fielder-Civil.

The first thing to note is that this would be far from the first time a film about a celebrity who is no longer with us has attracted this kind of controversy, and director Sam Taylor-Johnson was a ‘close friend’ of Winehouse, making this a bit of a ‘passion project’ for her according to Variety.

But, fans have now seen a couple of pictures from Back to Black that show a distressed Amy – played by Marisa Abela – being restrained by police officers as her husband Blake – played by Jack O’Connell – is arrested.

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It isn’t commonly disputed that the arrest took place, with Blake getting collared in 2007 for his role in the assault of a member of bar staff and then an attempt to bribe someone to cover it up, but according to reports from the time this arrest took place inside the couple’s London apartment, not in front of a gaggle of paparazzi and a crowd of onlookers.

Naturally, the real Amy would have been very distressed at the time, but whether that all spilled over onto the street is disputed.

Filming for the biopic is taking place in Camden, and saw Abela following O’Connell into the street in character shouting: “I want to go with him. Baby, I love you. Baby, I’ll be fine.”

However, the early shots of the film have annoyed some of Winehouse’s fans, with some even commenting how they’d like to see the film boycotted.

“This is f**king revolting,” one comment read.

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Another said: “Can we all agree to completely ignore this film when it comes out?”

A third wrote: “Need the Amy Winehouse biopic to cease production IMMEDIATELY.”

However, the film has backing from Amy’s estate, half of which is owned by her father Mitch Winehouse.

He seems to be OK with what is being portrayed, given that he recently shared a picture of his own character – played by Eddy Marsan – on his Instagram account.

Mitch has previously spoken about against other attempts to tell Amy's story, including Asif Kapadia's documentary Amy.

He accused that film of 'trying to portray [him] in the worst possible light' and called the Academy Award winning film 'a negative, spiteful and misleading portrayal of Amy.'

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Amy died in 2011 aged just 27, with the coroner returning a verdict of misadventure, also noting that the content of alcohol in her blood led to ‘unintended consequences’ and her ‘sudden death’.

Then, a later inquest into her death confirmed that she died of an accidental alcohol overdose.

The film is set to follow Winehouse and Fielder-Civil’s marriage, which ended in 2009, two years before her death.

As well as Abela, O’Connell, and Marsan, the cast also includes Lesley Manville.